


Two Ravens

by sabrinachill



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-11-18 05:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrinachill/pseuds/sabrinachill
Summary: Alex returns from his final tour in a flag-draped pine box; Michael is willing to do whatever it takes to get him out of it.But they end up raising a lot more in that cemetery than they bargained for.***Michael clenches his jaw, his fingers curling a little tighter into his calloused palm, and uses his powers to pry the lid off the coffin. It rises in a groan of wood and scatter of dirt, and he lifts the lantern a little, angling its bluish light down into the grave.Lying there, in his perfectly pressed dress blues, is what remains of Alex Manes.The mortician did his job well; Alex looks whole and at peace. His skin is almost devoid of the pallor of death, his thick hair dark and glossy and artfully styled. He almost looks like he has dozens of times before, when he was sleeping in Michael’s tiny bed with his eyes closed and face relaxed, the curve of his long eyelashes lying against his smooth cheek.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh look, it’s me, back on my multi-chapter AU bullshit. I apologize in advance.
> 
> Everything here is the same as canon, except Alex didn’t recover from his war injury.
> 
> Title from Bloc Party’s “Signs,” which can be blamed for this entire thing.

“Unit ten-forty, this is dispatch. We’ve got a report of a trespasser out at South Hill Cemetery.”

Max wraps both hands around the steering wheel and squeezes, his head dropping back against the cruiser’s headrest. It’s 12:03 a.m. and, technically, he’s off duty. 

He could refuse to take the call; just pawn it off on the next shift and go crawl into his soft sheets with his worn copy of _The Brothers Karamazov_ and a generous pour of Johnny Walker Black. No one would blame him. After all, it’s been a long night already and, with Jenna out sick, he’s had to handle everything on his own. 

Besides, no deputy likes to take the graveyard trespassing calls. People get up to some very weird shit in cemeteries in the middle of the night.

But something — some alien sense or cop intuition, _something_ — tells him that he wants to be the responding officer to this one.

After all, it’s the cemetery Rosa is buried in, and he’s caught Liz there after hours more than once already. Somebody else might decide it’s worth the paperwork to put her in handcuffs.

“This is unit ten-forty,” he says into the radio, his voice rough and worn with exhaustion. “I’m en route.”

* * *

Ten minutes later Max parks the cruiser and climbs out, the desert seeming to stretch into infinity around him, dark and nearly silent. 

Nearly. 

Because there’s a faint rustling sound carried on the ceaseless wind, coming from the far edge of the cemetery. It’s a steady shifting, or maybe a sliding sound — constant and strangely familiar, but he can’t quite place it. 

Still, something about it opens a pit in his stomach, raises the hair on the back of his neck. 

The stars on the western horizon are blotted out by thick black storm clouds that are quickly rolling in. Max can smell the distant rain, feel the electric charge in the air all around him. It makes his skin prickle, makes his boots feel heavy on the gravel pathway, the badge and uniform and gun belt nearly unbearable weights dragging him down.

He has a key for the graveyard’s tall, intricate, wrought iron gate, but he doesn’t need it. It’s standing wide open. 

Max stops and checks it over; it appears to be unlocked, not broken. It could have been picked, maybe, but by someone who knew what they were doing since there’s not a scratch on it. Most likely, it was opened by someone with a key. 

He hopes it’s just the caretaker doing some after-hours maintenance, but that uneasy feeling — and that _sound_ — tell him that it’s not.

He makes his way through the graves by moonlight alone, not wanting to alert whoever (or whatever _)_ might be out here to his approach. 

The cemetery is bathed in blacks and blues and silvery starlight; pale, jagged headstones protrude from the tall grass like bleached, broken bones. He passes hundreds of them in haphazard rows before hesitating for just a moment at Rosa’s, confirming that it’s undisturbed and decorated with fresh daisies.

The sound grows louder; Max unsnaps his holster and rests his hand on his gun. The night air is rapidly growing colder and he shivers a little. 

And then he rounds a tall statue of a weeping angel and finally sees the trespasser.

It’s a man working by a single battery-powered lantern sitting on the ground at his feet. Moonlight shines on his dark curls, his brown eyes are teary and swollen, and grave dirt is steadily rising and piling in a mound beside him. 

That’s why the sound was so familiar, so horrible.

It’s the sound of Michael using his powers to dig a grave.

Except this time, he’s digging someone _up._

“Oh, good,” Michael says, flicking his eyes to where Max lurks in the darkness. “You’re here right on cue, Deputy.”

Max drops his hand off the gun and takes a few careful steps forward. He doesn’t look at the headstone in front of Michael; he doesn’t have to. 

“What are you doing?” 

Max didn’t have to ask that question either; he already knows the answer. And his lack of surprise at this whole situation means that some part of him expected to find this, has expected it since the news first broke.

“I’m getting things ready for you,” Michael says, strangely flat and unemotional. As if what’s happening is perfectly reasonable, the only acceptable course of action, and Max is simply too dense to have caught up to that realization. 

Lightning flashes silently in the distance, illuminating Michael’s face for a split second. He’s still in his suit from the funeral this afternoon, the coat stretched taut over his broad shoulders, the black tie loosened and hanging from his unbuttoned collar. But it’s all dirty and disheveled now, as if he spent the evening lying on top of the freshly covered grave.

Which, given who’s buried here, is probably the truth. 

Michael’s hair is wind-blown and unruly and he’s wild-eyed and half drunk; his face is all grief and madness and exhaustion from pushing his powers too far. 

But his voice is solid. Sure. 

Immovable.

“You’re gonna do this, Max. You’re gonna bring Alex back.”

* * *

All the exhaustion has been chased from Max’s bones; his deep voice is hardened steel. 

“No. Absolutely not.”

And Michael stops digging — but only because he’s already finished. The pit before him yawns into six feet of absolute darkness.

And now he can turn his full attention to his brother. 

Michael glares, jaw clenched so tight the words come out as fragments, sharp as shrapnel. “The camping trip. Rosa’s ‘car crash.’ The ten years of constant worry and vigilance that followed. _Liz._ Your parents. Your career. Your education. My _junkyard._ ” 

Michael has stepped closer with every word; he’s now standing so close that tiny flecks of spit are hitting Max’s cheeks. “You have everything, and I have nothing. You _owe_ me this, Max. So you are going to bring him back, or you might as well kill me right here and now and toss my corpse down in that hole with him.”

Max staggers a half step back like he’s been physically struck; the very _idea_ of losing his brother stinging like a slap. 

“I mean it, Max,” Michael continues, unfazed. “The only good thing I ever found on this whole damned planet is now buried in this grave. I have no interest in trying to carry on without him.”

Max’s brows draw together and he reaches out one hand futilely; even he’s not sure if he’s thinking of trying to comfort Michael or of restraining him.

Michael’s love and fury are typically so tightly leashed, leaking out only in the occasional longing glance or bar brawl. Max has never seen his brother anything like this.

And he has no idea how to respond to it.

So there’s nothing he can do except shake his head and tell him the truth. 

“I don’t even know if I _could._ ”

“You brought Liz back.”

Max throws his hands in the air and spins away, shaking his head. “She was dead for no more than five seconds. Alex has been gone—“

“—a week. His vehicle hit the IED one week ago today.”

Max rubs at his jaw, stubble sharp on his palm. It grounds him, brings him back to the practical issues at hand. Such as—

“His body went through catastrophic trauma. He was blown apart. And then he was flown halfway around the world, taken to a mortuary, and _embalmed,_ Michael.”

“So heal it. All of it.”

Max turns back to him, biting his bottom lip a little, his eyes sad. “Even _if_ — and that’s a big _if_ — I can, how are you going to explain it? To him, to everyone who knows him? The whole town knows he died — hell, half of them were at the funeral.”

“I’m assuming that’s where I come in,” Isobel says, a tall, pale wisp suddenly appearing on the graveyard path behind them. Her hair is in a messy topknot that seems to glow in the cloudy moonlight, loose pieces whipping on the increasingly furious wind. She’s wearing an oversized sweater, leggings, and boots — and she’s got gallon-sized jugs of nail polish remover clutched in each hand.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit much, Iz?” Michael asks. He almost sounds like himself — sarcastic, teasing, affectionate — instead of the manic-eyed, grief-stricken, jagged edge of madness Max has been talking to.

Almost.

“You didn’t see him after he brought Liz back,” Isobel answers. “I’m not sure this is _enough._ ”

“You already knew about this insane plan?” Max asks her.

“She was with me when I found out he’d been killed,” Michael says, his voice breaking a little over the last word. “I didn’t exactly handle it well.”

“So he told me everything,” Isobel says, tilting her head, studying Max like he’s a bug pinned inside a display case. “And it seems that you already knew about their relationship, too.”

Michael blinks, surprised, before turning to stare at his brother, watching his face for some kind of reaction. In his grief he’d forgotten that he’d never actually told Max about Alex; he’s not completely sure how he’ll handle it.  

“Yeah, I’ve… I’ve known since high school,” Max admits. “But you seemed happy and I didn’t want to push; I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. But then—“ he trails off, looking in the direction of Rosa’s grave.

“Then it all went to shit,” Michael finishes, dragging a hand across the back of his neck. “Fine. Whatever. If we’re all done discussing my apparently transparent closet, can we please just get on with this?”

Max sighs. “Michael, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

At his words, the anger that’s been sustaining and fueling Michael flickers for a moment, revealing what’s hiding behind it — fear, pain, loss, and grief so deep and dark that it will swallow him whole. His brown eyes grow suspiciously shiny in the light of the work lamp; his sharp chin trembles, just once, ever so slightly. 

“How did you feel?” He asks, voice like broken glass. “When it was Liz?”

Max shakes his head, staring down at the dusty toes of his work boots. “That was different. I’m in love with Liz. I’ve always loved her.”

Michael swallows, hard, his gaze a sword piercing straight through Max’s chest. “Yeah.”

And Max jerks his head back up, shocked, the realization of what Michael’s saying shifting and rearranging his understanding of his brother, of this situation, of everything that he’s suddenly sure is inevitably going to happen. 

“ _Damn_ ,” he whispers, mostly to himself. 

Isobel rests a hand on Michael’s shoulder, her long fingers only slightly trembling. “We’re going to try.” She looks over at Max, her features sharp. “Right, Max? We’re going to do everything we can to fix it.”

Max grits his teeth and lifts his eyes to the sky, silently pleading for help. From his home planet, from a god he doesn’t believe in, from fate or destiny or anything that will intervene in this moment, stop this insane plan from being put into motion. 

Nothing comes; no one is going to save them.

And so, finally, he simply nods.

* * *

Michael steels himself for what he’s about to do. He tells himself that he’s used to pain, that he has to do this in order together Alex back, that the only way out is through. 

And then he clenches his jaw, his fingers curling a little tighter into his calloused palm, and uses his powers to pry the lid off the coffin. It rises in a groan of wood and scatter of dirt, and Michael lifts the lantern a little, angling its bluish light down into the grave. 

Lying there, in his perfectly pressed dress blues, is what remains of Alex Manes. 

The mortician did his job well; Alex looks whole and at peace. His skin is almost devoid of the pallor of death, his thick hair dark and glossy and artfully styled. He almost looks like he has dozens of times before, when he was sleeping in Michael’s tiny bed with his eyes closed and face relaxed, the curve of his long eyelashes lying against his smooth cheek. 

It’s almost the same, _almost,_ and that’s the part that makes Michael’s skin go clammy and his stomach turn over. The funhouse mirror aspect of it all. 

Because that’s not a bed; it’s a coffin. And Alex isn’t sleeping; he’s very, very dead. 

Michael looks closer, analytically, trying to separate facts from feelings. He’s conducting triage, cataloguing injuries and differences, putting this body firmly in the category of _deceased_. 

Strangely, it helps. 

Because he knows Alex’s body better than his own, and even under the darkened sky he can tell that a part of the leg under the pants isn’t real, that there’s no playful curve to those full lips, that the flush in Alex’s cheeks is colored powder instead of vitality. 

What he is staring at is both Alex and simultaneously not; even with the box opened he’s still Schrödinger’s Manes.

That perspective grounds Michael a little better, snaps him back to reality — the one in which he has dug up a grave and is about to take part in a resurrection. 

At least, he hopes so, anyway.

Isobel squeezes his shoulder. She doesn’t say anything; she knows him too well to try. She knows that set of his jaw, knows there’s no backing down from this, not for him, not now or ever. 

Max, however, has to ask. 

“Are you sure about this?” His whole face is pleading with Michael to change his mind. 

“I’ve never been more sure about anything,” Michael grits out from between his teeth. He looks over at Max, his gaze granite. “Do it.” 

* * *

Max climbs down as carefully as he can and ends up standing with his feet on either side of Alex’s shiny dress shoes, loose dirt falling across Alex’s uniform. Max’s boots leave dark stains on the pristine white satin of the coffin’s lining. 

He shifts his weight, leaning over a little awkwardly in order to reach Alex’s chest; the movement accidentally dislodges the fake leg they placed in Alex’s pants.

Above him, barely audible over the rumble of the oncoming storm, Michael makes a small sound like a wounded animal.

And Max almost stops. Almost climbs out of the hole, plies Michael with so much whiskey and acetone that he can’t stand, and then keeps him locked up in that tin can he calls home until the worst of the grief is over. 

But Michael’s voice when he’d said, “Yeah,” when he’d admitted that he’s in love with Alex Manes… if Max makes him walk out of this cemetery without Alex, he won’t be the same man ever again. A piece of him will die, will always be buried right here.

So Max carries on.

Normally, he touches wherever the wound is in order to heal it but Alex is in pieces, and decaying, and filled with embalming fluid. Literally every cell of him is wounded in some way.

So Max opens the jacket, loosens the tie, and unbuttons the shirt enough to rest his palm over Alex’s heart.

It feels wrong, terribly and utterly _wrong,_ a violation against nature itself.

But then, so does that look on Michael’s face.

The wind is bitingly cold and raging, tossing Michael’s curls across his forehead and flattening the tall grass to the ground. Max closes his eyes and concentrates, his power flaring and pulsing all around him; he doesn’t know it, but he’s shouting with effort. 

The small lantern Michael brought doesn’t so much flicker or burn out as _explode,_ sparks and glass flying all around them. 

Lightning forks across the sky; thunder breaks, cracking and rumbling and shaking the ground beneath their feet. And Max is trying, he really is, but Michael can see that it’s not enough. It’s not going to work.

So, desperate, he thrusts his power out and adds it to Max’s, holding him up, strengthening him, trying to push more of Max’s abilities into Alex’s body. 

They’ve never done anything like this before. It’s as if their powers fit together like puzzle pieces, snapping into one whole before splintering apart and then fusing together once more, over and over, magnetically colliding and multiplying into something far larger than either of them can contain.

The combination is too much, too powerful. Everything around them begins to glow; the entire world seems to be consumed into nothing more than blinding brightness and endless screaming, into power and pain and electricity. 

They wonder if they’ve been struck by lightning.

They wonder if any of them are going to make it out of here alive.

And then Max manages to wrench himself free; darkness and silence return, their ears ringing, their skin sparking.

Max slumps, gasping and nearly unconscious, against the dirt wall of the hole and Isobel falls to her knees on the ground above him, reaching down to rest her hand on his head. 

Michael hasn’t moved; neither has Alex. 

Time stretches, warping and bloating, the space between each beat of their hammering hearts seeming to fill an eternity. The first of the fat raindrops begin to fall; one splatters on Alex’s cheek. 

Max takes a deep, shaky breath and closes his eyes. 

And Alex opens his. 

Michael sags in relief, a muttered “ _fuck”_ escaping from his lips in a grateful sob. 

Isobel smiles, thin and strained, relief and worry warring behind her tasteful makeup.

Max, barely conscious, guzzles from the gallon of acetone.

And, unseen and unknown, every other corpse in the cemetery twitches, stirs, and _wakes._


	2. Chapter 2

“No offense, Max, but you’re hardly the man I’d expect to find straddling me in heaven,” Alex says, casual with a teasing edge, as if they were joking over beers at the Wild Pony instead of sprawled together at the bottom of his grave. “…and that means that I must be back on Earth.”

His voice is a little hoarse from disuse, but other than that he seems perfectly normal. He’s smiling that smug little sarcastic grin Michael has seen on his face a thousand times before; his eyes are clear and he’s calm and collected and seemingly unsurprised to find himself lying in a coffin six feet underground.

All Michael can feel about that is overwhelming, nearly unbearable relief.

All Isobel feels is suspicion.

She narrows her gaze on Alex. It’s sharp as a dagger; she throws her words like darts. 

“You don’t seem all that freaked out by your miraculous resurrection.”

Alex ignores her for a minute as he stirs, flexing and stretching, amazed to find all the usual parts present and responsive. He wiggles his toes — all ten of them, despite having the vivid memory of seeing his right foot and ankle (still laced into his blood-soaked combat boot) lying in the sand several meters to his right, the exposed bone wet and glistening in the relentless sunlight.

“Oh, thank god,” he murmurs, realizing that he’s not just alive but also healed and _intact_. 

“Nope, not god,” Michael says. “Just Max.” His eyes dance a little despite the darkness; his sarcastic tone is utterly at odds with the raw relief and overwhelming joy on his face.

Alex can tell that he’s in shock; they all are. Honestly, none of them had really thought this would happen. 

They’d given it their best shot, obviously, and Alex — wherever he had been — had held onto hope that he would see Michael again, but to actually be back here, where he’s whole and warm and free, to be given the entire world again… it’s more than he could ever hope to express. 

So he doesn’t really try. 

“No, Isobel,” he finally answers. “‘Freaked out’ isn’t really the right way to describe how I feel. I’m just… I am _so_ grateful. To all of you.”

Michael still hasn’t moved, kneeling in the dirt at his graveside like a penitent pilgrim. Alex can’t help but look up, staring at him as if he contains all the light and warmth of a rising sun. 

It draws Isobel’s piercing attention.

“You told him about us,” she accuses Michael. “That’s why he’s not surprised. He _knows._ ”

Michael just blinks, a fat tear escaping his watery eyes and rolling down his cheek, mixing with the rain that’s pelting his face and soaking into all their clothes. 

He doesn’t seem to hear Isobel; he doesn’t seem aware that she even _exists_ right now.

So Alex answers for him. 

“No one told me anything,” he says. “After I died I just... I just knew.” 

Then he falls silent again; that’s all they’re going to get. 

He’s too busy staring at Michael.

And it’s clear that no one believes a word he says, but Alex doesn’t care. The truth of how he knows what they are, how he found out, isn’t something he intends to offer up for public consumption. 

He’ll talk to Michael about it. Later. 

In private. 

In the meantime, Alex pulls his legs out from beneath Max’s crumpled form and stands, brushing dirt from his uniform, the shifting weight making the wooden coffin creak.

“You guys can stop staring at me like I’m going to suffer some kind of psychotic break, you know,” he says. “I’m fine.” 

And, incredibly, he actually is. 

One hundred percent, totally and completely _fine_. 

But he doesn’t blame them for doubting it; Alex is still a little in awe of it himself, that a person can be so thoroughly unmade and then, somehow, put back together again. But what he feels isn’t shock, or fear, or even unease. He’s just happy and grateful; he’s ready to make a real life for himself and not waste a single one of these moments that he’s been given a second chance to experience.

As for the way he arrived at all of those profound feelings… well, that’s more of the stuff he’s going to have to discuss with Michael. For now, he just looks down at the large cop sprawled at his feet and nods, offering him a hand.

“Thank you, Max.” Alex shakes his head a little, bewildered. “That seems inadequate but I don’t really know how else to say it; I’m pretty sure Hallmark doesn’t carry greeting cards about resurrections.”

“Maybe you could modify one of the ones they make for Easter,” Michael offers. “Max would appreciate that; god knows he’s got a big enough martyr complex.”

Max just groans and flips off his brother, then lets Alex pull him to his feet.

He’s still pouring acetone down his throat.

“Unbelievable,” Isobel says. “This is absolutely _unbelievable._ ”

“Yeah,” Alex says, taking a deep gulp of the fresh air, rain dripping off the end of his nose. “It is pretty incredible—“

“No, I mean my dumbass brothers! Both of them get to have their _high school crushes_ in on the secret; meanwhile my goddamned _husband_ is still in the dark.” 

She stands, throwing the second acetone jug at Max, lightning breaking the sky overhead. “I thought you’d need me. That Alex would be so freaked out I’d have to get into his mind and calm him down. Instead, _I’m_ the one on the outside.”

“Iz—“

“No. Don’t.” Rain plasters the loose sections of her hair to her flushed cheeks; she waves one hand dismissively at them all. “I’m done. I’m going home to Noah — and I’m finally going to be honest with him.”

“Isobel, please.” Max sounds hollow and hoarse, like he’s been cracked open and had every vital piece of himself scraped out. “I need help getting home.”

“But first we both need help getting out of this hole,” Alex says, and Michael, who has been utterly oblivious to everything except the fact that it _worked,_ that Alex is _right here_ , finally shakes loose at the sound. 

He staggers to his feet and helps lift both of them from the grave, gently lowering them to the ground.

He should be burned out; he should be in as bad of shape as Max. Instead, he’s so careful, so precise, making sure they’re steady and comfortable — and then he’s pulling Alex into his arms as if he’s a drowning man who’s been thrown a life preserver. He wraps one arm around his waist and the other up around his shoulders, his large palm splayed across the back of Alex’s head, holding it against him. 

Through the thick fabric of the uniform he can feel the warmth returning to Alex’s skin, can count the steady beat of his heart and rhythmic rise and fall of his breath. 

Alex is back. Alex is hugging him. Alex is whole and perfect and _alive._

…And Alex is still the same man who went off to war. He’s the Alex that left him, time and time again.

So Michael reluctantly lets go and backs off, shoving his hands in his pockets to remove the temptation to touch him again. 

But Alex isn’t having it, looping one arm around Michael’s elbow and tugging until Michael’s good hand is free again. He weaves their fingers together, pressing his palm against Michael’s calloused skin.

Michael just stares at him in wonder.

“Ugh,” Isobel sighs. “Fine, Max, let’s go. But I’m driving the cruiser.”

* * *

They’re almost back to the cemetery’s gate, slipping and sliding in the wet grass and shivering in soaked shirts plastered to their skin, Michael and Alex’s hands still clasped together, Max stumbling with one arm slung across Isobel’s shoulders—

—And she suddenly just _stops_.

Her face somehow grows even paler than normal, her glossy lips falling open in shock. 

She looks, for lack of a better phrase, like she’s just seen a ghost. 

“Iz?” Max asks, tightening his arm around her, his weak knees struggling to support his weight. “You okay?”

But she just keeps staring out across the graves for too long, her gaze unfocused. It’s the way she looks when she’s using her powers — but there’s no one here to influence. 

There are no minds to be read.

“Yeah,” she finally says, blinking too much. “Yeah. I’m fine. This place is just getting to me, I guess. I could have sworn I heard something, that I _felt_ …” 

She takes a deep breath but just trails off, shaking her head. Then she pulls herself upright and starts walking Max toward the car again. 

“It was nothing. Everything’s fine.”

* * *

Isobel peels out a minute later, Max slumped across the backseat. She’s got the lights and sirens blaring just because she can, just because she’s never been one for subtlety.

Which leaves Michael is in the cab of his old truck with the recently undead love of his life sitting a foot away from him on the vinyl bench seat. He’s an alien who hatched out of a pod and can move things with his mind, but _this_ might be the strangest situation he’s ever found himself in. 

The storm rages on outside, but inside — inside Michael feels like he’s already survived the worst of it and is standing in the calm of the other side. The tornado that’s been whipping beneath his skin for a solid week has finally passed, and he’s clean and renewed and quiet for the first time. 

He can breathe. He can just _be_. 

Rain lashes the windshield, water running in rivulets down the glass and smearing the world beyond into an impressionist painting in varying shades of black and blue and gray. The sound is like pebbles hurled against the metal roof, drowning out the thick silence stretching between them. 

“I’m sure you have questions,” Michael finally says. “And I know you’ve been through a lot. So we can talk or not talk or... whatever you need.” 

Michael finally risks a glance over at him; something in his chest warms when he finds that Alex is staring right back. “I’ll give you whatever you need.”

Alex smiles, resting his hand on top of Michael’s on the seat between them. His skin is so warm, so soft, so _real_ ; Michael’s heart stops and then restarts, pounding twice as hard as before. 

“I’m alive,” Alex answers, warm and smooth as honey. “That _is_ everything that I need.” 

Michael swallows; there’s a lump in his throat, a tightness in his chest, and a burning behind his eyes. He’s hoping and praying that this isn’t some kind of cruel mirage or hallucination, that Alex really is here, that he really is saying these things. 

“Well, nearly everything, anyway,” Alex continues. “Right now I would like to get out of here. Maybe eat something, take a shower, forget this whole dead-then-undead thing for just, like, twenty minutes.”

Michael shakes his head, a smile blossoming on his tear-stained face. Of course Airman Alex, the practical soldier, would find simple, concrete solutions to a situation so complex it defies even Michael’s genius understanding of the universe. 

It’s such a relief that Michael laughs, surprising himself with the sound. 

He’s a little shocked that he remembers _how._

“Okay,” he says with an easy grin as he starts the truck, the old engine catching with a roar. “I can handle that.”


	3. Chapter 3

They run from the truck to the Airstream, lightning blazing across the sky above them while thunder cracks, shaking the ground beneath their feet, the junkyard echoing with the metallic clang of rattling car parts.

But Michael isn’t worried about the storm’s rage. He’s too busy staring at Alex, watching, ensuring that everything seems right and normal and _alive_.

And it does. Alex moves with the ease of someone young and healthy; his eyes hold every bit of the mirth and life they did before. 

He’s back. He’s really and truly _back_.

Michael doesn’t know how many times he’s going to have to think those words until they finally sink in, until he actually believes it.

A few hundred thousand more, probably.

And now they’re surrounded by the dim quiet of Michael’s trailer, the tiny quarters forcing them to stand close enough to feel the heat coming off one another’s skin, their rain-soaked clothes dripping on the scuffed linoleum floor. 

Michael is struck by the sight of Alex here, amongst all his things, alongside everything he holds precious in this world. It makes him want to brand himself on Alex’s skin, to stretch himself out over him and use his own weight to keep Alex pinned here, to hold him to this patch of earth. 

But laying claim to Alex, getting to wrap himself around him and hold on tight, being allowed to say the word _mine —_ that’s not their relationship. It never really has been, and it’d be unfair of him to expect one little resurrection to have changed that.

So, instead, Michael looks over at the one cabinet he uses to store food and wonders if there’s anything in it except cheap whiskey and stale PopTarts. 

“I, uh, I’ll see what I can do about getting you something to eat,” he says, trying to put his fidgeting hands in his pockets, forgetting that they’re soaked and plastered to his skin. “I know you probably don’t want to have to stay here, but it would be confusing if you were seen in town right now and—“

“It’s fine, Guerin,” Alex says, his voice smooth and soft. “It’ll hardly be the first night I’ve spent in your bed.”

Michael scratches at the back of his neck. “Right. Yeah. Okay.” He takes the tiniest step back and gestures at his filthy suit, the rain having turned the dirt from the cemetery to muddy smears. “I should get cleaned up.”

Alex nods. “Me too. I smell like embalming fluid and weird soap — and I should probably take the makeup off my face.”

Shit, right. Alex is literally _covered_ in reminders of what he’s been through, and Michael feels like he should have thought of that, been prepared for it somehow. 

He feels like such a dick. 

“You… you should definitely go first.”

Alex closes the small distance between them and reaches out, tugging on Michael’s belt. “Or we could share. It’s not like I’ve got anything you haven’t seen before.”

Michael just blinks; he has no idea what’s happening. The last time he saw Alex, they’d had an ill-advised, drunken hookup one night when he was home on leave. Alex had snuck out as soon as Michael had passed out; they hadn’t spoken since.

That was nearly a year ago.

And, sure, Michael has done nothing but think about Alex, and drink about Alex, and futilely try to forget about Alex in all the time since… but it honestly never crossed his mind that Alex might be feeling the same way.

Michael shoves his wet hair out of his eyes, looking over Alex’s shoulder to the tiny bathroom. 

“The Airstream’s shower is hardly big enough for two.”

“We’ll make do,” Alex says, already undressing as he walks to the bathroom; the uniform falls away piece by piece in wet, squelching piles. Michael remembers the first time Alex came to see him after he’d enlisted, how he’d deliberately folded each item before placing it up on a chair. None of that caution or care remains. 

But then, it’s not like he’s ever going to put the uniform on again. 

“Come on,” Alex says over his shoulder. “I really don’t want to be alone.”

And so Michael, never one to deny Alex anything (but certainly not anything related to nudity), strips off his filthy suit. It’s the only one he has ever owned and the night’s events have left it beyond repair, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything except the expanse of tan skin Alex is revealing, all of it smooth and unmarred, completely healed of everything it went through in the war and every scar his father left. He’s fresh and new in a way Michael has never seen before.

It makes Michael want to treat him with kid gloves, to keep his fingers soft and distant and his touches chaste and pure; to protect the fragile perfection of Alex’s skin.

Alex has other ideas.

He pulls Michael to him and presses their bodies together under the hot water, steam rising in curling tendrils all around them. There’s no way to move without rubbing against one another but Alex seems fine with that, with sharing soap and heat and comfort and flesh as they watch grave dirt wash down the drain, as the chill of the freezing rain thaws from their bones.

He ducks his head under the spray and Michael works the shampoo through Alex’s soft hair with his rough fingers, the strands seeming too short and silky compared to the longer curls he’s used to washing. 

Alex keeps his eyes closed but his lips part in relaxation; Michael watches water and suds slide down his neck, cascading over the hard planes of his shoulders and chest. It’s stupid of him to stare; he’s rock hard and aching and, given how close the shower forces them to stand, there’s no way Alex doesn’t know it. 

So Michael quickly rinses them both and switches the water off before he can embarrass himself any further. 

Alex finally opens his eyes. 

And Michael pauses for a moment, biting at his lip; then he peels away the last bit of caution he’s carried his entire life and uses his powers to float a couple of t-shirts and soft sweatpants from the clean laundry piled on the couch. Michael has already resurrected Alex and lifted him from his grave tonight, but still — he watches for any sign of panic at such a blatant display of his _otherness._

But all Alex does is stare, his eyes widening a little in something close to awe. His lips twitch like like he wants to say something, maybe, but the silence has settled around them so deep and thick that it feels wrong to break it, like shouting in church or laughing during a funeral.

They dry off with Michael’s only towel and tug on their clothes; Alex climbs into the bed. 

And Michael’s beyond exhausted but he wonders if he should go get take-out or turn on Netflix or sit primly on the couch and read quietly. He feels like he should do something, _anything —_ but Alex just flings back the sheets and pulls Michael down next to him.

So they wind up in the tiny bed, Michael careful to keep an inch of space between their curved bodies. He’s nothing but nerves and fear, wound as tightly as when they were kids — except it’s so much worse now. 

Because now he knows what he’s missing; he knows exactly how good it can be. And he’s desperate not to make a wrong move, not to drive Alex away from him again.

The space between them is so charged it singes. He can feel the warmth of Alex’s skin, hear the soft sounds of his breath and the sheet shifting across his shoulders and then—

“I saw you, you know.”

Michael’s mouth speaks before his brain has a chance to catch up; he _really_ hadn’t intended to get into this tonight.

But it’s out there now, and Alex rolls onto his back; the bed is small enough that it forces them to touch, Michael shifting until he’s propped up on an elbow and hovering over Alex slightly. It’s all muscle memory, an achingly familiar position, because Alex likes to look at Michael when he talks, likes to see every small expression that crosses his face, watch every movement of his mouth. 

Michael missed everything about Alex but he might have missed this the most — the steady way his dark eyes seem to lock onto him and burn with unwavering, unfaltering _attention._ No one else has ever given that to Michael, not really.

And he’s spent the past week thinking no one ever would again.

“You saw me?” Alex asks. 

Michael licks his lips and nods a little, but he has to look away; he finds himself staring into the space two inches to the right of Alex’s head. 

“Two days after you—“ Michael can’t say _died_ , can’t form the word even now, even after it has been undone, “—after _it_ happened. I had finally managed to drink enough to pass out and in my dream... I saw you.”

Alex takes a deep inhale, his chest rising and brushing against the fabric of Michael’s t-shirt, and then he nods, his face turning serious. 

“There’s something I should tell you. I wasn’t exactly honest when Isobel asked how I knew the truth about you all, about what you are.”

Michael smirks, relieved at the curve the conversation has taken. “You mean you didn’t ‘just know’? You didn’t suddenly have access to some mystical database that contains the answers to all the mysteries of the universe?”

“I take it by your sarcasm that you already knew that was a lie.”

“We all did; you’re terrible at it, Manes.”

“Well, I couldn’t tell her the truth.” Alex’s tongue slips between his lips, just a teasing flash of wet pink. “Because the reason I knew… it was _you.”_

Michael frowns, furiously combing through his memories and trying to figure out where he slipped up, how long ago it might have been, whether it’s possible he also inadvertently exposed his secret to someone else… 

“Me? How? Did I move something with my mind once or something? Did you see my research or the pieces of the ship or—”

Alex reaches up and smooths the crease between Michael’s eyebrows, then lets his fingertips drift across his stubbled cheek and brush across Michael’s downturned mouth. 

“You know that dream you were talking about?” Alex murmurs. “I know because I was there, too.”

* * *

_They’re in the museum, standing under the tacky replica UFOs and surrounded by hundreds of blue lights shining like stars while a little green alien statue looks on from the corner. Everything seems just like it did ten years ago, except better — there’s no scuff marks on the walls or old chewing gum stuck under the lip of the flying saucer overhead. Their shoes squeak on the polished linoleum. It smells like clean night air and Alex’s skin; the light is soft and filtered and warm._

_It’s perfect._

_Michael’s body remembers how this felt when it was real. The nervous anticipation, the twitching fingers and racing heart, the utterly foreign sensation of wanting something — something good, something just for himself — and then actually_ getting _it. He feels all of that again, wrapped in the softness of familiarity, and comfort, and love._

_And standing in front of him, his fingers loosely threaded through Michael’s perfect, uninjured ones, is Alex. He somehow looks like every version of himself that Michael has ever known — young and idealistic, battle-hardened and bitter — all coexisting in a state of eternal quantum entanglement._

_It shouldn’t be real; and, of course, it’s_ not _. This is just a dream._

_But Alex_ feels _real under Michael’s hands, solid and warm, his fingers squeezing back when Michael pulls him in closer._

_“I’ve missed you so much,” Michael says. It’s a broken whisper, a confession, a plea to the universe._

_And Alex just smiles. “You didn’t need to. I’m always right here.”_

_“No, you’re not. You’re not anywhere anymore. You’re… you’re gone.”_

_Alex pushes an errant curl off Michael’s forehead. “Not really. I never could leave you, not for good — though god knows I tried.”_

_Michael laughs, but there’s no joy in it. “It sure seems like you’ve managed to do it this time.”_

_“Well, if that’s true, then how can I be here now?”_

_That’s a question for the priests and philosophers, and Michael never claimed to be either. So he lets the question lie, unanswered; he has so many more important things to say. As in—_

_“You know that I love you, right?”_

_If this was real, Alex would be stunned. He’d probably leave again, find some excuse to put distance between them, to keep this from being something that mattered._

_Which is why Michael never said it out loud before._

_But Dream Alex just says, “I think I’ve always loved you.” He smiles, squeezing Michael’s fingers again. “Right from that first day out by your truck, when you were holding my guitar.”_

_“You never told me.”_

_“Neither did you.”_

_Michael leans in, his forehead resting against Alex’s. “God, we were idiots.”_

_Alex swallows and pulls away a little, his face sad for the first time. “You know, after the IED exploded, I knew I was dying — and it took a_ while _. I was just lying there, bleeding out into the sand, sweating and shaking and shouting, knowing what was happening every second.”_

_Michael can see it, can practically feel it; his eyes water and his chest tightens. He rests one palm against the side of Alex’s neck and the other on his shoulder; he’s not sure who he’s trying to comfort more._

_Alex just smiles at him a little, wistful and bittersweet. “But around the pain and fear, all I could think about was_ you _. How much I regretted what happened with us, that we’d never been able to work it out — and now we wouldn’t have the time to. That I’d never get the chance to tell you just how much you mean to me.”_

_He takes a deep breath and wraps his arms around Michael’s waist. “You’re my biggest regret, Michael. That I was too afraid to give us a real shot. To make it public, and genuine, and permanent. If I had my life back… that’s all I’d do. I’d spend it with you.”_

_A tightness has been steadily building in Michael’s chest, something coiling and tightening and drawing him toward Alex and he can’t stand it any longer; he surges forward and pulls Alex into a fierce kiss. Alex is just as hungry, his fists in Michael’s hair as the two of them spin and shuffle and shove until Alex has Michael pinned back against the wall of lights._

_Michael groans into his mouth and starts tugging at his clothes, yanking his shirt over his head and popping the button on his jeans, his touch messy and frantic and desperate. He doesn’t know how long they have here in this dream world, so he’s not going to waste time with anything elaborate. It’s not what he wants anyway. He just wants skin and heat and friction; he wants panting breath and sweat and feverishly whispered promises of love and eternity and other things they can never have again._

_Alex gives him all of that. Alex gives him everything he’s got left._

_And when they’re done, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall, their legs tangled up together and heart rates finally returning to somewhat normal speeds, Michael decides it’s time to get the final secret off his chest._

_He’s tired of hiding, of lying. If this is his last chance to come clean, then he’s not going to waste it._

_And besides — what harm can it do to tell a dream version of his dead former lover?_

_“Since we’re confessing things,” he says, his fingertips drawing abstract designs on Alex’s forearm, “and since it’s not like I’ll get another chance… there’s something else I always wanted to tell you. Something you should know about me.”_

_Michael takes a deep, fortifying breath, then looks up and flexes his powers. All around them, the fake stars begin twinkling and overhead, the flying saucers start to spin; the little plastic alien in the corner takes a step forward and waves hello. Alex watches it all like a kid with a front row seat at the best circus of his life._

_“This is me; I’m doing this. Max, Isobel, and I… we’re survivors from the 1947 crash. I’m an alien.”_

_Alex’s eyebrows raise and he blinks a few too many times, sitting still and silent for the space of several breaths._

_But then he just smiles and turns to Michael, winding one of those wild curls around his finger._

_“Okay, so what? You’re an alien; I’m a ghost.” The right side of his mouth quirks up a little higher, his eyes glittering. “We’ve all got our baggage.”_

_Michael leans his head back against the wall and laughs, stroking his thumb over Alex’s jaw. “You’re handling this remarkably well.”_

_Alex shrugs, an easy, elegant movement. “I died. After that, nothing seems all that dramatic.”_

_And then they’re kissing again, soft and slow this time, Alex’s hands in Michael’s hair, Michael tugging him into his lap and looping both arms around his waist. There’s every reason to believe that this is the last time Michael will ever hold Alex, will know the taste of his tongue and the way his hands seem to spark as they move over his skin, but it doesn’t feel like a goodbye._

_It feels like something new is just beginning._

_…Which is what finally gives Michael the idea._

_“Wait,” he says, pulling back just enough to catch his breath. “Max.”_

_Alex raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, uh, that’s definitely not the man I thought you’d be thinking about right now.”_

_“No, I mean, Max has powers too. He can heal. If he could just touch you—“_

_“That might be a tad difficult, seeing as how I’m pretty sure the largest chunks of me are currently in a refrigerated drawer somewhere in Iraq.”_

_“But they’ll bring your body back to bury you, right?”_

_Alex shrugs again, as if the final destination of his physical remains couldn’t matter less. “I suppose.”_

_“Okay then,” Michael says, feeling like maybe there’s a point to his existence beyond broken radiators and busted knuckles for the first time in ages. Because Michael fixes things; it’s what he does._

_It’s who he is._

_And Alex is a thing that can possibly be fixed._

_“I need you to hold on, Alex. Try to stay… wherever you are. I’m gonna bring you back.”_

* * *

Back in the Airstream Michael blinks, shaking his head. 

“No, that wasn’t really you. That was just me, drunk and heartbroken, while my subconscious manifested something I wanted to see.”

“Then how do I remember it?” Alex asks. “The museum, the confessions, the _kissing—_ ” he trails off so he can demonstrate, a light graze of his lips against Michael’s, which are still parted in shock.

“...How?” Michael manages, the word scraped out of him. 

“I have no idea. Maybe it has something to do with you being an alien? Maybe your abilities linked us somehow, in some way that goes beyond our current understanding of death and consciousness?”

It’s a fascinating idea; it opens up a whole new realm of possible experimentation in Michael’s attempts to understand what he is and where he came from. 

And yet, all he can think about right now is—

“You told me you loved me in that dream.”

Alex presses a kiss to Michael’s collarbone where it peeks out above the neckline of his shirt. 

“Yeah, I did.”

Michael runs his fingers through Alex’s hair, the strands still damp from the shower. 

“You told me all you wanted was to have your life back just so you could spend it with me.”

“Yeah,” Alex says, before brushing his hot mouth over the sensitive skin of Michaels neck. “Going through something like that… it gave me perspective. Made me realize that all I’d ever really wanted was _this._ You and me. Something simple; something pure.” 

He kisses the tender spot beneath Michael’s right ear; his words seem to rumble through the bones of Michael’s skull. “Dying makes the important things suddenly become very clear.”

When he speaks, Michael’s voice shakes a little; he feels like he’s standing on the edge of a high cliff, staring at white-capped waves breaking over jagged rocks below. 

“And now that you’re alive again? Do you still mean that?”

Alex has kissed his way across Michael’s sharp jawline, his dark eyes staring at him with more heat and weight and sincerity than they have ever held before. 

“Every word.”

Michael crashes their lips together and Alex gasps into his mouth, his fingers gripping Michael’s hips, their bodies tangling in the loose sheets. 

Michael feels like he’s back in the dream again, only this time is so much better; this time he can feel the sharp rasp of Alex’s stubble against his skin and the way his nose bumps against Alex’s cheek when their heads aren’t angled just right. He can laugh at the small sound of frustration Alex makes as he tries to wrangle Michael’s shirt off. 

This time it’s _real._

Michael pulls back for a moment and just stares down at Alex, taking him in, his gaze soft and reverent. He shifts his weight to free up his hands, framing Alex’s face as his fingertips brush the hair off his forehead and trace across his temples, follow the lines of his cheekbones, skim over the curve of his full lips—

—And then Alex gets impatient and pulls him back into a searing kiss.

The storm outside is winding down now, the coming dawn lightening the dark sky to a deep purple; the promise of a new day lingers just beyond the horizon.

And, for the first time in a long time, they’re both actually looking forward to it

They finally have hope that their future might hold something _good_. 

* * *

It takes hours to dig out of a sealed coffin and through six feet of packed dirt, especially when trying to do so with nothing but bone and sinew and a few shreds of desiccated flesh. 

By the time the first zombie — the freshest corpse — hauls itself up onto the grass, the sun has nearly set. 

And, a mile or two down the road, Kyle Valenti waits outside the door of The Wild Pony. It won’t technically be open for another hour, but he knows Maria gets there early and that she’ll take one look at his face and let him inside. 

He’s right, of course; Maria unlocks the door for him as soon as she arrives. 

“You’re never the first drink I pour,” she says, leading him across the scuffed wood floor. “What’s going on?”

“The usual,” Kyle says, running a hand over his weary face. “Dead daddy issues. Girl problems. The existential crisis of having everything I thought I knew about the world and my place in it being thrown into question.”

“Oh, so nothing major then,” Maria quips.

Kyle pulls a barstool down from the counter and slumps onto it; Maria pours his drink and gives him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder before she takes down the rest of the chairs.

She turns on some music and they fall into an easy, companionable silence; she’s slicing lemons and watching Kyle slurp on his second gin and tonic when they hear someone else stumble in.

Maria doesn’t look up; the regulars have a tendency to think of the Pony’s official operating hours as mere suggestions, and she usually allows it. 

The earlier she starts serving drinks, the more money she makes to help her mom. 

That’s all she cares about these days. 

“We aren’t technically open yet, but if you have a seat I’ll be with you in a minute,” Maria calls.

But the man just keeps walking, his gait an unsteady thump and drag sound. And the _smell_ —

Kyle turns to look at him, taking in his filthy condition, the clearly broken ankle he’s dragging, and the contusion on the side of his head. 

“Oh my god — sir, please, I’m a doctor, let me see if I can help—“

But Maria reaches across the bar and wraps her hand around his wrist, stopping him.

“What are you doing?” Kyle asks. “This guy clearly needs medical attention.”

“No, he doesn’t. I recognize him. He was a regular.”

“ _Was?_ ”

“He came in for the last time a couple of weeks ago, drank until I cut him off.” Maria swallows. “Then he went home and kept on drinking. Drank himself to _death._ ”

“Well, obviously not. I mean, he’s here, he’s walking around... kinda,” Kyle hedges, as the man stumbles into a table. “I don’t think the dead do that.”

“Apparently they do now, because I’m telling you, that guy is dead.”

Kyle rolls his eyes and slides off the barstool, approaching the man cautiously, like he’s a wounded animal. “Sir? I’m Doctor Valenti and you’re obviously in some type of medical distress—“ 

The man spins to him with a speed Kyle wouldn’t have thought him capable of. He grabs Kyle by the shoulder and pulls him close, the black maw of his mouth opening, yellowed teeth snapping and aiming at Kyle’s jugular.

And Kyle reacts on instinct, punching him square in the face.

But something is wrong; he can feel the flesh sliding separate from the muscle and tendons beneath. The man’s jaw dislocates, his head spinning to a grotesquely wrong angle on his neck. 

Kyle tries to steps back, to free himself from the man’s grip, disgust and fear and confusion swirling inside him. 

Because there’s no way that man should be able to keep standing after suffering an injury like that. And yet he _is_ , still clutching Kyle’s shoulder, still snapping those disgusting teeth inches from Kyle’s face. 

He smells like rot and dirt and decay; Kyle looks into his cloudy eyes and can tell there’s no one behind them.

And then Maria charges at them wielding a chair like a weapon, whacking the back of the man’s knees hard enough to send him sprawling. A half second later Kyle drops too, pinning him to the ground. 

The man makes a moaning sound and squirms a little, but Kyle’s got a good enough hold on him that he can grab his wrist and check his pulse. 

His _nonexistent_ pulse.

“Holy shit,” Kyle breathes. “He really is dead.”

Maria stands over them both, blowing the hair out of her eyes, keeping a tight grip on the chair. “I told you.” 

The man doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t seem to be slowed by any of his obvious injuries, snarling and trying to claw Kyle off of him. 

Kyle grunts and shifts his grip and it makes the man’s shirtsleeve ride up enough to bare his forearm — and that’s when Kyle sees the fractal burns on his grayish skin, looking just like the ones he treated Liz for last month. 

He’s sitting on the guy’s back and his stomach is dropping through the floor; he looks up at Maria, all the color leached from his face.

“We need to call Max Evans. Right now.”


	4. Chapter 4

They wake to the sound of something scratching against the side of the Airstream.

It’s slow and faint at first, like a tree branch caught in a light breeze and scraping across an icy window pane. Only there are no trees in the junkyard and all the trailer’s windows are too tiny for it to be making such a steady sound.

Alex starts to sit up, trained to immediately respond to any potential threat, but Michael just groans and pulls him in tighter against his chest, hooking his chin over his bare shoulder, sleepy and warm and pliant.

It’s too blissful and tempting; Alex lies back down and drifts off again, dozing.

But the sound doesn’t go away.

A few minutes pass and it picks up, multiplies, becomes more like claws on metal — a piercing, grating sound, peppered here and there with grunts and groans and the shuffle of feet.

Lots of feet.

So Alex gets up this time, tugging on one of the discarded pairs of sweatpants lying in a heap on the trailer’s floor and wasting several seconds looking around for his service weapon before realizing that he hadn’t been buried with it.

So it’s not there.

Michael owns a gun, he knows, but it’s probably out in the glove compartment of the truck; Alex doubts anyone has ever tried breaking into the Airstream before.

It certainly doesn’t appear to contain anything of value — except to those few who know to look beyond Guerin’s rough exterior. 

Alex moves smoothly to the door, twitching the curtain to the side just enough to peer out. They’d stayed up all night and well into the morning so the sun is just setting, the last deep golden rays bursting over the horizon. 

And against its light he sees dark silhouettes moving in jerking, halting steps as they surround the trailer, searching for a way inside.

The original lock quit working ages ago, but there’s a flimsy excuse for one that Michael screwed into the door — just a metal sliding bar that fits into a slot attached to the doorframe — so Alex slams it shut, then kicks at the edge of the mattress.

“Guerin. Get up.”

Michael is still blissed out and aching in all the best of ways, warm and wrapped in sheets that smell like Alex’s skin. He has no intention of ever moving again—

—but he hears the urgency in Alex’s clipped voice. It’s not something he’s heard before; this must be the newfound authority of a commanding officer. He pries his eyes open, looking around for the problem.

That’s when he finally hears the sound.

And two seconds later, the trailer starts _rocking._

“What the fuck?” Michael asks, voice thick with sleep even as he tumbles out of the bed and winds up sprawled out naked on the floor.

“I’m not sure,” Alex answers. “But definitely nothing good. Get dressed; we’ve got to do something.”

Michael pulls on the other pair of sweatpants and moves to Alex’s side; they peel back the edge of one of the curtains—

—and stare into the face pressed against the other side of the glass. 

It’s green and gaunt, covered in flesh that’s mottled and rotted; the bared teeth are stained a deep yellow and its sunken eyes are cloudy and unfocused. 

“What the _fuck,_ ” Michael asks again, this time with feeling.

“It looks like…”

“It looks like a goddamned _zombie._ ” Michael recoils, remembering too many nights spent at the drive-in, watching larger-than-life carnage being caused by things exactly like what’s lurking outside his home.

Alex raises a teasing eyebrow. “As a member of the recently undead, I’m offended.”

It’s meant to be a joke, to take some of that fear off Michael’s face, but the implications hit them both a fraction of a second later.

“Jesus,” Michael mutters. “You don’t think that _we_ …”

“I think the fact that there’s an incipient zombie apocalypse less than 24 hours after you resurrected me is too much of a coincidence to actually _be_ a coincidence.”

Michael rakes his sleep-tousled hair off of his face. “Fuck.”

“Yep.”

For half a second they let themselves think about it — about what this could mean for themselves and each other, about their newfound hope for their future, about all of it. 

And then they pack it away and focus on the here and now. Alex has been to war; Michael’s entire life has been one fight or another. They know how to shove fear into tiny boxes at the back of their minds and get shit done. 

So Michael reaches for the large wrench that’s been serving as a makeshift paperweight on a pile of schematics.   
 ****

“Here,” he says, pushing it into Alex’s hands. “In case that lock doesn’t hold.”

“Okay, fine,” Alex says, testing its weight, “but what are you going to fight with?”

Michael just taps his temple.

“Right. Sorry. That’s going to take some getting used to.”

In answer, Michael smirks and uses his powers to squeeze Alex’s ass.

“This is hardly the time, Guerin.”

“Sorry, sir,” Michael says with a cheeky salute. “Can’t help myself — inappropriateness is one of my favorite coping mechanisms. And that ass is—”

“—Getting ready to fight a zombie army.” Alex shakes his head ruefully and pulls Michael in for one hard kiss, his fingers gripping the muscle of Michael’s side. “So can we please focus on the incoming siege now?”

“Yeah, sure,” Michael says. The trailer lurches again, tossing them against one another. The groaning noises become louder; one of the small windows shatters as a rhythmic pounding begins against the Airstream’s door. “Or we could just get out of here.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Alex points at the door. “Outside are at least half a dozen people who are quite possibly the _living dead_ and therefore want to eat our brains.”

Michael just looks at him. “I’m an alien. As if I wouldn’t be prepared to deal with a possible invasion.”

And then he grabs Alex’s hand and tugs him to the far end of the Airstream. He slides the small table to the side, flips back a rug, and tugs at the handle of a hidden trapdoor. It opens easily on well-oiled hinges, revealing a nearly two foot gap between it and the ground — and a round, white hatch cut into it. 

Michael stares at the hatch for half a second and it drops down with a thud; he grabs his phone and swings down onto a ladder that’s barely visible in the dark. 

Alex follows.

As soon as they’re safely clear, Michael pushes the hatch closed with his mind; less than a minute later they hear a tremendous crash as the trailer above them falls over on its side.

“Fuck,” Michael mutters, picturing the crushed remains of his home — and the strength of the things that were able to tip it over.

“Yeah,” Alex agrees. He’s surveying the secret bunker with a professional eye, assessing the situation. “Any chance there’s a back door to this place?”

Michael shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Then at least tell me you’ve got cell service down here?”

“Yeah,” Michael says, thumbs already flying over the touchscreen, “up at the entrance.” He sends the phone zooming with his mind to rest on the top step of the ladder and there’s the little _whoosh_ sound of an outgoing message — followed by answering thuds against the hatch door from the zombies beyond. 

“Okay, I texted Max and Isobel. I’m not sure what else to do at this point; I don’t think we should contact anyone else until we understand exactly what’s going on.”

Alex doesn’t agree.

He thinks about all the other people in town, everyone who’s at risk if the dead really are rising. He should get to the base, sound the alarm that the undead are roaming the usually-quiet streets of sleepy Roswell, get soldiers out on patrol, work to protect the town—

But that’s not his job anymore. It never will be again.

He wonders briefly if he’ll have to spend the rest of his life in the shadows, hiding in Guerin’s bed and bunker… and how long it will be before that’s not enough.

But now is not the time.

The zombies continue to groan and snarl and beat on the hatch, so Alex sets his self-actualization concerns aside and gets back to the current mission.

The bunker is filled with machinery and technology; surely some of it can be used as a weapon.

Alex pokes around the gears and glass and vials and beakers. It’s like a laboratory for Dr. Frankenstein and Q and Doc Brown all rolled into one, and if Alex hadn’t recently been resurrected after a telepathic communication with his alien true love from beyond the grave, he’d probably be a little freaked out. 

As it is, he’s just searching through the controlled chaos for something he can use to fight a horde of zombies.

He shakes his head at what his life has become; it’s a miracle he hasn’t gone completely insane.

“Don’t poke that,” Michael calls over to him. “I’m not sure what it’ll do to you.”

“Roger that,” Alex answers, moving on from the iridescent gelatinous substance he’d been staring at.

Instead, he flips back a black tarp covering what looks like some kind of enormous, complicated machine. To anyone else, it wouldn’t immediately be clear exactly what it is. 

But he’s an airman. He understands things that fly.

“This is a spaceship.”

Michael rubs at the heavy stubble on his cheek; it’s been at least a week since the last time he bothered to shave. 

“Oh, uh, yeah. It is.”

“Michael, this is—“

“Genius?” He plasters on that cocky grin and pretends to dust off his shoulder. “I know.”

“I was going to say serious. You are _serious_ about leaving this planet.”

The smile drops away and Michael swallows, his sharp Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, before walking over to Alex. His good fingers wrap loosely around his wrist, tugging it away from the prototype. 

“Until last night, yeah. I was.”

Alex tilts his head a little. It’s hard to look at Michael; it’s impossible to look away. 

“And now?”

“Now,” Michael murmurs, slowly turning them until the back of Alex’s thighs bump against the nearest worktable, “the only way I’m using that thing is if the zombies take over the planet and we have to flee for our lives.”

Alex boosts himself up onto the table with his thighs spread so Michael can stand between them. The thumping sounds from above, the terror, the questions of how the zombies were created and what they might be forced to do in order to unmake them — all of it falls away. It’s nothing but his skin and Michael’s hands, the press of lips and tangle of tongues, dangerously distracting. 

“We?” Alex asks, a little breathless.

“I brought you back from the dead,” Michael says, the words pressed into the underside of Alex’s jaw. “You pledged your literal undying love for me. So yes, _we._ You’re stuck with me now, Manes.”

From the top of the ladder, Michael’s phone dings. 

He sighs and flicks his eyes to it, watching it fly back down to his outstretched hand. 

“It’s Liz — she’s at Max’s. Says they’ll be right over.”

* * *

Five minutes earlier, Liz had finally been asleep.

Isobel had called her before dawn and summoned her to Max’s house, saying that they needed her, that _he_ needed her. Liz thought about hanging up on her; she thought about blocking her number.

How dare they ask her for help.

She thought it at the same time she was lacing up her shoes.

And she’d been waiting on the porch when Isobel had pulled up in the obnoxious lights-and-sirens-blaring cop car (which had taken her a full ear-piercing ninety seconds to figure out how to turn off) with an unconscious Max crumpled in the backseat.

It had been a struggle just to get him onto the couch, and then Isobel had promptly fucked off because (a) she had something important to tell Noah and (b) Liz had only recently learned the truth about Rosa. She wasn’t quite sure she could share a room with Isobel without tearing her face off just yet.

So she’d spent the better part of the day watching Max sweat and shake and puke into a bucket. In his better moments she’d put cool washcloths on his forehead and helped him take sips of nail polish remover, and finally, just a few hours before sundown, he’d recovered enough to finally pass out.

His head was resting in her lap; hers was thrown back over the edge of the couch.

Which meant she had a killer neck cramp as she fumbled to shift him out of her way and get to Max’s phone, which would NOT stop ringing.

Seven missed calls. Five from The Wild Pony, one from Cam’s cell, another from the precinct. 

And an all-caps text from Michael to _GET THE FUCK TO MY BUNKER ASAP SOMETHING IS WRONG._

“Max,” she murmurs, shaking his shoulder. He’s so solid, his face finally at peace; she tenderly brushes a lock of his thick hair back before she remembers that she’s supposed to be angry with him.

Hearts are traitorous bastards.

“Max, you’ve gotta wake up. Something has happened.”

And then something slams into one of the glass panels of Max’s door.


	5. Chapter 5

Max’s entire body aches; each individual _cell_ feels bruised. His tongue is fuzzy, his eyes are too hot beneath his thin eyelids, and every pounding beat of his heart reverberates across his skull.

He’s also been stuck in his itchy, uncomfortable uniform for what feels like _ages_. Liz and Isobel had managed to get the gun belt unbuckled from his hips and tugged off his heavy boots, but he’s still spent the day in sweat-soaked polyester, puking into a bucket. 

He feels so shitty, actually, that he’s not even embarrassed about Liz seeing him in such a state. Instead, he’s greedily reveling in every brush of her cool fingers against his overheated flesh, in the soft feel of her jean-clad thigh under his cheek, in the comforting scents of her shampoo and perfume and laundry soap as he rests his aching head in her lap.

Still, when the fist first strikes the door Max is off the couch like a shot, pulling Liz behind him and reaching for his gun. 

He’s been plagued throughout the day by fitful dreams of Alex’s corpse, only far more rotted and defiled than they’d found it. Or of opening the coffin and finding Liz’s body there instead, or of nailing it shut with Michael trapped inside, or of Isobel clawing her way out of the grave and snapping at him with bloody teeth. 

Everything has been so confused and muddled, swirling together like a kaleidoscope of horror and pain. 

So when he first looks through the glass-paneled door and sees the moonlit silhouette of a dirty, diseased-looking stranger pounding against it, it’s as if it’s simply a continuation of his nightmares. Max wonders if he’s caught somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, trapped in a purgatory of consciousness— 

—Until part of his glass door _shatters_.

The sharp sound shakes off the last of the drowsiness and yanks him firmly into the present. He flips the safety off his gun and raises it in two steady hands.

“I’m a police officer and I’m armed,” he calls to the intruder, but it makes no impact. There’s the soft tinkle of a few more pieces of glass falling, and then there’s a fist through the broken pane, dirty fingernails clawing at the air as if to draw him toward it with sheer force of will. 

“Back away slowly,” Max instructs.

It doesn’t.

And something about that hand — in the color of its skin or the way the tendons seem to stretch against it, or maybe in the jerking, unnatural motion it makes — raises the hair on Max’s arms.

“Get behind the couch and stay down,” he tells Liz, before moving in careful, even steps toward the broken door.

Sharp shards of glass litter the floor and he winces as one slices through his sock and pierces his heel, but his gun never wavers.

“Step back now or I will be forced to consider you a threat.” 

Max’s voice is naturally deep and authoritative; now, strained by exhaustion and irritated by hours of sickness, it has solidified into rough-hewn granite.

Any sane person would follow his instructions. 

But what he’s dealing with isn’t a person, and it definitely isn’t sane.

He draws close enough to peer around the doorframe, finally coming face-to-face with whoever — _whatever_ — is stupid enough to break into the house of a muscle-bound alien with a badge and a gun and the ability to kill with his bare hands. 

At first, Max thinks it’s just a man. An older one, with hair that might have once been blond, his wrinkled, sagging skin a godawful fake tan hue. He’s wearing what looks like a leisure suit over a mostly unbuttoned shirt, gold chains tangled in his matted chest hair. 

His arm is still through the door, and the glass shards should have sliced him open — _have_ sliced him open, Max amends once he looks closer.

But the only blood that’s there is black and thick, clotted and foul.

Slowly, hesitantly, Max raises his eyes.

The man looks back through ones that are opaque.

He lunges suddenly, snarling, swiping for the doorknob and Max fires on instinct. The bullet breaks another pane of glass then hits the man in the chest, exactly where his heart should be.

And it doesn’t slow him down at all.

So Max fires three more rounds, each hitting in a tight cluster around the first… but nothing happens. The intruder is still standing, still snarling, still fighting his way inside.

“Shit,” Max mutters, taking a step back, his mind spinning as he tries to figure out what the fuck he’s supposed to do now.

“Aim for the head,” Liz shouts from her position standing behind the couch.

Max flicks his eyes back toward her, frowning.

“You’re supposed to be staying down,” he yells back, his ears ringing from the crack of the gun, the sound deafening in such an enclosed space.

“Just do it, Max,” Liz answers. “I know it’s crazy, but that thing— that thing looks like a zombie. And if it is, a headshot is the only way to take it down.”

Max’s jaw clenches but he adjusts his aim, raising the barrel a little to place the man’s forehead in his gun’s sights. “How do you know so much about zombies?”

“Di— uh, an old, um, friend of mine — from Colorado — was into them.” She rolls her eyes, seemingly at herself, and leans forward a little. “Just trust me, okay?”

Liz is uncharacteristically flustered and there’s a story there, Max knows, but now isn’t the time to ask. The man — zombie? — has his hand on the doorknob. In another few moments he’ll have the lock flipped open and be inside the house, with nothing between those angry teeth and Liz but Max’s gun.

And that’s a chance he simply cannot take. 

Because Max doesn’t have much faith that a bullet to the brain will be more effective than four to the heart… but then, he’s always had faith in Liz. 

Complete, total, unquestioning _faith_.

So when the zombie breaks out another pane and twists the doorknob, the door easing open a fraction of an inch, Max shoots him right between the eyes.

And he falls, unmoving, onto the gravel around Max’s fire pit.

“Oh my god,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand across his chapped lips.

“ _Ay, dios_ ,” Liz murmurs, the glass crunching under her shoes as she steps up behind him.

“Are you okay?” 

Max turns to the side, half of his attention on Liz, half making sure the corpse at his feet doesn’t suddenly start moving again. Which seems irrational, he knows, but so does everything that’s happening right now. So he keeps the gun in his hand, his finger resting lightly on the trigger.

Liz nods and says, “Yeah, I think so. As okay as a person can be when confronted with the beginning of a zombie apocalypse, anyway.” But her hand is reaching for his free one without thinking, the touch meant to be warm and steadying and grounding.

It makes Max’s nerves feel like they’re boiling, bubbles popping all along the endings.

“Come on, Liz, this is just… some really messed up addict or something,” he tries to rationalize. “It can’t actually be a _zombie_. They aren’t real.”

Liz looks up at him, raising her eyebrows. “Neither are aliens from outer space.”

And Max just shakes his head, a rueful smile playing at the corners of his lips. 

“Good point.” 

He carefully walks back across the scattered glass to his discarded boots, pulling the large shard from his heel with a hiss of pain before tugging them on over his vulnerable feet. “You said something about Michael texting? What’s going on?”

Liz has gone back to staring at the corpse on the porch, her mind whirling. “I-I don’t know. Your phone has been going crazy — Maria and Cam and the precinct and, yeah, Michael sent some screaming text—“

“Let me see.”

She hands over the phone and he starts scrolling through the messages, only half-hearing her as she mutters, “We’re in the middle of nowhere, Max.” She starts pacing, glass crunching under her feet, her bracelets rattling as she gestures. “Your house is down a dirt road, and the desert is empty for miles around. If there are zombies, why wouldn’t they be going after easier targets? Why come all the way out here?”

Max reads over the transcripts of a few of his voicemails, scans over the increasingly serious texts, and thinks he might have the answer. 

God knows he wishes he didn’t.

He sighs and looks up from the phone, frowning, a deep furrow carved between his heavy brows.

“I think he was here for me,” he finally says. “I think I did this.”

Liz stops pacing abruptly, staring at him without blinking. “Why?”

Max shoves the hair off his forehead, sighing and looking up at the ceiling. 

There’s so much to tell her, and he’s not sure where to start.

He’s also _really_ not sure how she’s going to take it. After all, even though he barely remembers getting home, he’s certain that in the brief amount of time Isobel and Liz spent together, his sister didn’t reveal what they’d been doing or why he was so sick.

Why whatever is happening now must be his fault.

“...Alex Manes,” he finally says, voice scraped raw.

Liz shakes her head a little in confusion, her dark hair sliding against her cheek. “What?”

Max bites his bottom lip for a moment, looking up and away from Liz in order to get the words out. 

“This is all happening because last night, Michael and I resurrected Alex Manes.”

He looks back just in time to see something shutter behind Liz’s eyes; her features go still and solid as a statue’s. 

“Tell me everything. Right now.”

And so he does. 

* * *

“Holy shit,” she murmurs as he finishes.

“I know,” Max answers. “I shouldn’t have done it, I knew I was playing god, but, Liz…” He reaches tentatively for her hand, resting his fingers lightly on hers. “I knew what it felt like when it was _you._ And I just— I couldn’t put my brother through that kind of pain.” 

He swallows, lifting his hand away again and raking it through his disheveled hair. “But now, with whatever that thing is— all I can think is that something must have gone wrong, our powers spreading farther than we intended or creating some kind of chain reaction… I don’t know.”

“Was he like that guy? Was Alex just a…” Liz’s voice trails off, unable to say the word.

“No, no, he was the real Alex,” Max assures her with a steady gaze, his voice confident and even. “Completely.”

But Liz stares back with a mixture of pity and fear in her dark eyes. “Maybe that guy was, too. At first.”

Max frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe with the way your powers combined and spread, maybe it diluted their effectiveness? It was potent at first, enough to make Alex seem like he was all right, but eventually he’ll deteriorate into…” she waves a hand at the decaying body lying across the shattered remains of Max’s door.

And Max feels like she just punched through his ribcage, wrapped her hand around his heart, and _squeezed._

“Liz, we let Michael take Alex home with him. It’s been hours, and now he’s texting that something’s wrong. What if… what if you’re right? What if Alex is becoming one of them?”

Liz stands, tucking her hair behind her ears and reaching for her jacket, then moving to the door. “We have to go. Right now.”

“I know,” Max says, already slinging the gun belt back around his hips, fighting through the last of the shaking weakness and nausea that remains like wraiths wrapped around his heavy limbs, draining energy that he desperately needs. “This house clearly isn’t secure, and Michael needs me. We should get you some place safe and then I’ll go deal with whatever’s going on at his trailer.”

Liz wheels on him, suddenly furious. 

“You should know me better than to think I’d allow you to waste time stashing me somewhere like some helpless damsel.” She’s speaking loud and fast, a violent storm trapped in the body of a woman, and Max has no idea how _anyone_ could ever think she couldn’t handle herself. “Besides, like you said, you don’t know what’s happening. I’m a scientist trained in biology, Max. You’re going to need me.”

Max shakes his head. “I’m just trying to protect you,” he mutters, “but we can argue about it in the car.” 

He snatches his Jeep keys from the hook next to the door and stomps out into the silvery, moonlit desert without looking around first.

Which is simply the latest in a series of serious mistakes. 

Because when he does look up, after Liz is already through the door behind him, after there’s no chance to shield her from what’s coming, he sees the zombie. 

Its body is nearly unrecognizable; Max identifies it before Liz does. 

Probably because it’s been haunting his nightmares for over a decade.

The dark hair that’s tangled and dirty and stringy, the skin that’s dried and missing in places, exposing muscle that’s somewhat charred-looking, as if it’s been partially cooked. But he can still see her in the tatters of clothing that remain, in the garish lipstick and the woven friendship bracelet tied around one rotted wrist… 

“ _Rosa_ ,” Liz breathes. 

“No,” Max answers, one arm stretched toward Liz, ready to stop her if she starts running for her sister. Rosa’s mouth opens, the tendon in her jaw visible, her teeth stained dark. “Not anymore.”

Liz yanks away from him, her long hair whipping across his shoulder. 

“Not anymore? That’s all you have to say about it?” She laughs, or maybe it’s a sob — the sound is all-consuming pain and rage; it makes Max’s heart clench so tightly it _aches_. “I guess it’s just that easy for you, Max. ‘She’s dead, so she doesn’t deserve our respect.’” Liz sneers, slapping away the hands that are reaching for her. “After all, you destroyed her body and memory once before. How hard could it be to do it again?”

Max reels back, Liz’s burning fury striking him like the fiery brand of a curse searing into his skin. It is his scarlet letter; it is the mark of Cain. 

Because he knows she’s _right_. 

When it comes to Rosa, he gave up his right to have an opinion the second he told Michael they were going to cover up her murder. And he kept giving it up for every day of the past decade, for every instant he let the lie continue.

Every second he let Liz suffer for his own selfish reasons. 

“Okay,” Max says quietly, his voice cracking as he turns his palms toward her. The gun slips from his fingers, surrendered peacefully to the dirt. “I’ll handle this however you want.”

Liz is shaking, her breath ragged, her eyes darting to her sister and away again as if she can only bear the sight in the tiniest of doses. 

And through it all Rosa continues her slow shuffle toward them, small clouds of dust rising around her dirt-stained satin shoes, the broken heels making her gait wobbly and uneven.

“Rosa? _Hermana_? It’s me.” 

Liz licks her lips, reaching her hands out toward her sister; Max shifts his position, making sure that his body is still between the Ortecho sisters. 

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Liz says, her voice too high, too tight, too brittle, “but we can handle it together. I can help you.”

Rosa ignores her completely and just keeps stepping forward. Her pace is painfully slow, every one of her movements spastic and unnatural; it’s the result of bones grinding together, the bits of remaining muscle contracting and sagging in a way they never should.

But Max just stays still, his body a warm, solid wall between Rosa’s clawing fingers and Liz’s soft skin. 

And Liz keeps pleading, switching languages mid-sentence, barely making sense, begging for her sister to hear her. She’s crying and pale and incoherent; by the time Rosa draws near enough to see the flat white of her eyes and the blackened outline of the handprint across her cheeks, Liz is so overcome that she’s gasping in painful, jagged sobs.

Which is why she realizes far too late that Max is not going to move. That he’s going to let Liz take whatever time she needs, do whatever she has to do; he’s going to let Rosa attack him rather than hurt her again. 

Rather than hurt _either_ of them.

Rosa takes another shuffled step. 

Liz can see the dark mole next to her eye, the moonlight shining on the red smear of her lipstick against the mottled green of her cheek. She wants to scream in horror; she wants to wrap her arms around her sister and never let go.

But, as she looks into the flat, clouded darkness of Rosa’s eyes, she knows that her sister isn’t here. Not really, not in any way that matters.

She hasn’t been, not for a decade. 

Still, Max holds steady, his eyes shining, his shoulders straight, his hands loose at his sides. Rosa seems focused on him, reaching out to clench her bony fingers around the front of his uniform, wrenching the shirt hard enough to pop a button free. 

It falls into the dirt and disappears beneath the toe of Rosa’s shoe. 

She’s close enough now that they can see the shine of her teeth, breathe in the horrifically familiar smell of cooked meat that emanates from her corpse. She stretches her mouth open farther than should be possible, her jaw practically unhinging as she aims her teeth at Max’s neck.

One more second and she’ll tear a deadly hole through his skin. 

Liz feels as if she’s been flash-frozen and lit on fire all at once, her body numb and searing and sobbing as she drops to the ground, grappling in the dirt until she wraps her fingers around Max’s discarded gun—

—And raises it with shaking hands. 

She’s never shot anything before and her vision is blurry with tears, but she knows there’s no time for a practice shot, no room for errors. 

Her sister’s face and Max’s are inches apart; she can’t make any mistakes here.

So she doesn’t.

The gunshot explodes and shatters the night; it echoes loud inside her skull. Liz knows that sound will haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.

But her aim holds true. 

Rosa drops, still and silent, with a fresh hole in her forehead. 

And Max immediately turns to Liz, murmuring senseless platitudes, easing the gun out of her grip. He tries to gather her against him with hands that are only now beginning to shake a little with the fear he’d kept so tightly leashed. 

“Liz—” he starts, with no idea how to finish, or what he can possibly say.

“Don’t,” she tells him, stepping out of his reach and shaking her head. “Just… don’t. You were right. That wasn’t her.” 

And while her words are rational and calm, the sentiments of a woman that copes by falling back on her logical, scientific side, Max knows she’s feeling anything but. That any softening he might have sensed from her over the last few days has disappeared, replaced by something as hard and cold as solid ice. 

He can practically _see_ the walls she’s hastily reconstructing between them. 

“Still,” he says, quiet and soft. “You never should have had to see her like that, to _do_ something like that. I’m— I’m so sorry.”

Liz swallows and swipes at hot, angry tears. 

“Yeah, well, what’s done is done.” She turns away from him and walks toward the Jeep, her back straight, her eyes never turning back to look at the fallen body of her sister. “Let’s go save the family we have left.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two quick things: first, a reminder that this AU deviates from the timeline before we know that Noah is evil — right now our intrepid crew knows that there is a fourth alien but has no clue as to who it might be.
> 
> Also, I am a slow writer sometimes. I’m sorry. And with the hiatus, I’m probably going to keep being slow for a while. But I know exactly what happens in this story and I’m not going to abandon it, I promise. <3

Later, Michael will wish that his abilities included the power to manipulate time. That he could rewind to this moment, to the feeling of Alex’s hands on his waist and the smell of his shampoo in Alex’s hair, to the minty flavor of his toothpaste on Alex’s tongue. To this place, before he knew the extent of what was happening up on the surface.

Before he knew what he’d have to do in order to fix it.

Because here, trapped in this bunker, the moment is perfect. It’s him and the man he loves, finally honest and together and, ironically, _free_ in a way they never have been before.

“Max is here,” Alex murmurs, soft and smooth, his lips against the side of Michael’s neck. 

And, just like that, the moment is broken. Perfection has passed; it’s just another memory. 

Michael sighs and pulls back far enough to see Alex’s face. “How do you know?”

And Alex is tugging at the neck of the old UFO Emporium t-shirt he’d borrowed and Michael is staring at a glowing, iridescent handprint—

—overlaid with what look like angry black fractal burns. 

“Because I can _feel_ him,” Alex answers. He blinks, frowning, then flexes the fingers on his left hand. “And I can feel you now, too. Does it always hurt this much?”

Michael shakes his head and tries to play it off, raising Alex’s hand to kiss his aching knuckles.

“I barely notice it any more,” he lies.

Alex sees through it of course, his jaw clenching. “I suppose there’s one good thing about having zombies in Roswell,” he says, brushing an errant curl off Michael’s forehead. “There’s a decent chance they’re feasting on my father’s flesh as we speak.”

“Nah,” Michael answers, “They usually want to eat brains, and I’ve yet to see any evidence that Jesse actually has any.”

Alex smiles, but there’s a strain between them that wasn’t there moments ago. A realization that the outside world continues to exist, that they’ll have to face it and whatever is happening sooner rather than later. Max’s handprint seems to light up the space between them, shouting about reality and consequences and all the things they’ve been blissfully ignoring since leaving the cemetery. 

And, as if to hammer the point home, a car horn blares outside. It’s barely audible through the bunker’s thick walls and the zombies incessantly beating on the hatch. 

Michael’s phone rings from its spot on the top step.

“It’s Max,” Alex supplies. “He’s worried.”

Michael sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Having you be this connected to my brother really freaks me out.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled about it myself,” Alex answers, pushing past Michael to start climbing the ladder.

“Wait,” Michael says, catching him with a strong arm around his waist. “You should let me go first.”

Alex leans into the touch for half a second, then determinedly pulls away. “Absolutely not.”

“I’m an alien that can throw zombies around with my mind,” Michael scoffs.

“And I’m a decorated combat veteran whose pockets are stuffed with chemical grenades I built from the stuff you have lying around this bunker.”

Michael scowls. “Fine. We’ll go together.”

There’s the sharp pop of gunfire from the other side of the hatch; the pounding falls away for a moment before returning twice as hard as before.

“We run straight for Max’s car,” Michael says. “No pulling any self-destructive hero shit.”

Alex’s lips twitch as he fights off a smile. “Agreed.”

Michael, however, is feeling far more somber. “Listen, Alex. If I don’t make it—“

“—I am not going to let that happen.” A tendon in Alex’s jaw flexes against his cheek; his eyes are hardened lava. 

“We said no hero shit.” Michael’s voice is flinty, hard and brittle and breaking a little.

“Come on, Guerin,” Alex says, shrugging a little with a fond smile. “What good is an afterlife if it doesn’t have you in it?”

Michael shakes his head, affectionate and disbelieving; having Alex _here,_ alive and happy and with him and willing to make these sorts of declarations… even with the impending apocalypse, life feels too good to be true. 

He finally laughs a little, rolling his eyes to the shuddering hatch overhead. 

“Well, I guess we have a love that’s beaten death once already. I’d be willing to bet it could do it again.”

Alex quirks an eyebrow. “Let’s try not to test that theory though, okay?”

Michael leans in to kiss Alex’s hand where it grips the ladder, his lips lingering for a second against the warm flesh. 

“Okay,” he finally says. “I’m gonna lift the hatch on three. You throw a grenade and we’ll start running.”

They climb to the top, Alex’s messy hair brushing against the hatch. “One,” he says.

“Two,” Michael says, readying himself to use his powers.

“Three,” they say together, the hatch raising in a sharp, shrill screech of the hinges. 

Alex tosses a grenade that explodes on impact in a fiery flash and concussive boom; dismembered body parts scatter all around him. It makes his stomach lurch and he flexes his right toes on instinct, making sure they’re really still there, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on his flashback beyond that. 

Because Michael is lifting them both out of the hole and then scrambling to toss zombies lumbering toward them in various states of decay, trying to clear a path to Max’s Jeep, idling a dozen or so yards away. Its headlights glare against the thick black of the desert surrounding them them, the light reflecting on a few of the shinier spare parts and the outside of the Airstream, now lying on its side with a hole clawed through the metal.

Max is standing just outside the driver’s seat, using the door as a shield and shooting anything that gets too close. 

Liz leans out the passenger’s window, waving a shotgun and screaming for Michael’s attention. He recognizes the gun as the one that lives in the trunk of Max’s police cruiser; it never occurs to him that Liz means for Michael to use it himself. 

Instead, he uses his powers to toss it to Alex. 

And a second later it blasts deafeningly loud and terribly close, smoke curling from the barrel. Alex had pressed it to the skull base of a zombie that had been creeping too close to Michael’s back, decapitating it in a shower of blood and bone and brain. 

Michael is terrified and nauseated and, honestly, a little turned on; he hesitates for a second before going back to tossing zombies down into the dirt.

But on the opposite side of the fray, Max’s eyes narrow at the sight of the large gun in Alex’s hands. His pistol shifts, placing Alex’s head squarely in the sights, seemingly against Max’s better judgment.

And Alex, conditioned and trained to constantly assess the greatest threat, freezes. He’s suddenly focused solely on Max, despite the zombies closing in all around him.

Because Max’s finger is on the trigger. 

Alex lifts his fingertips to the handprint over his heart, feeling the fear tightening Max’s chest.

“I’m okay,” Alex tells him, trying to push a sense of calm through their connection. “I’m not turning into one of them — and if I ever do, I’ll be the first to go. I would never put any of you in danger.”

Max doesn't lower the gun, doesn't respond, doesn't so much as  _blink._

And Michael, who has been caught up in the fury of the fight, finally looks up at Alex's words. A zombie groans and lunges, its teeth snapping a little too close to Alex’s skin; Alex still doesn’t move. Michael shoves it off and follows Alex’s eyeline to Max’s gun.

He’s suddenly confused and frightened — but, mostly, he's  _enraged._

“What the fuck?!” 

Michael narrows his gaze on Max’s gun and yanks hard enough that it’s tossed across the space, skittering into the dirt beneath the trailer.

“He’s worried I’m like them,” Alex explains, keeping his voice calm but not breaking eye contact with Max.

Michael grabs Alex’s arm and starts hauling him toward the Jeep, Max and his issues be damned. “Yeah, well, he’s always been a dumbass.”

And Max, to his credit, seems relieved. He nods and climbs back behind the wheel; Alex tosses one more grenade and then runs, pressed tightly to Michael’s side.

Liz clambers into the backseat and Alex and Michael pile into the passenger’s seat on top of each other; Max has the Jeep in reverse as soon as their feet clear the ground.

“Welcome to the zombie party,” Michael says. "It's a real undead blast."

“Oh, we’ve been at the party,” Liz answers, looking at Alex a little too closely as he climbs into the backseat beside her and buckles in. He feels like a specimen in one of her petri dishes, or a mouse in her lab.

And he knows how those mice inevitably end up.

“The zombies came to us, too,” Max explains, meeting Liz’s eyes in the rearview mirror and not relaxing until she nods at him the tiniest amount, signaling that she’s okay.

“But your house—“

“Is in the middle of nowhere, yeah.” Max sighs, eyes flicking to the mirror again, this time checking that they aren’t in immediate danger. The zombies are following the speeding Jeep but at a shuffling pace; they’re safe for the moment. “Our best guess is that we did this when we raised Alex, so they’re drawn to us. To our powers.”

Michael blinks, letting that settle in for a moment. He’d known deep down that he was responsible, but hearing the words spoken out loud in Max’s deep baritone makes it more real somehow. Guilt pools in his stomach and Alex can feel it through the mark, of course, which makes it infinitely worse. He reaches forward and squeezes Michael’s shoulder.

“But then why would they be at the Pony?” Liz muses, oblivious. Her analytical mind is too busy scrutinizing the facts available now that she’s had a second of safety to breathe, to think. 

“The Pony? Seriously?” Michael finds himself half-yelling, anger feeling a hell of a lot better than self-loathing. He starts ticking offenses off on the fingers of his good hand. “Zombies have already trashed my house, chased me out of my bunker, trapped me in a two-door vehicle with my judgmental ass of a brother, _and_ invaded my favorite bar?”

“Yeah,” Max says, ignoring Michael’s insult with nothing more than a deepening of his usual frown. “Maria called — apparently one walked in and tried to attack Kyle.”

“Heh,” Michael says, smirking at the first bit of good news he’s had today. “Good.”

“Michael,” Alex reproaches.

“What? That guy’s a dick.”

“He _was_ a dick,” Alex clarifies.

Michael waves him off. “Once a dick, always a dick.”

“Even if he is a dick, he doesn’t deserve to get eaten alive by the undead,” Max huffs.

“He’s not a dick,” Liz chimes in.

Alex sighs. “We’ve said the word ‘dick’ too many times.”

“Yeah,” Michael says, with a grin tossed back at Alex. “Two is the perfect amount of dicks.”

“Gross,” Max says, defaulting to his usual repulsion at the idea of one of his siblings having any semblance of a sex life.

Alex rolls his eyes. “Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve been in love with you for over a decade, Guerin.”

Michael just blows him a kiss over his shoulder.

“If we can focus for just a minute, the Pony attack is still an important deviation from the pattern,” Liz says, in full scientist mode. “The Pony is not an alien hotspot.”

“Except that it _is_ ,” Max says. “The fourth alien hunted victims from there for years.”

“And Isobel spent a night there honing her skills on Racist Hank and Maria a couple of months back,” Michael adds.

“So maybe they’re drawn to both aliens themselves and places where they’ve used a lot of power,” Alex theorizes. “Places where they’ve left some kind of residual energy.”

“Liz,” Max says, a new note of panic coloring his voice, “the diner. I used a ton of energy when—“

“—When you resurrected _me,_ ” Liz breathes. “My dad, we have to go—“

But Max is already turning the Jeep, the engine roaring as they head for the Crashdown as fast as possible.


End file.
